At their first meeting, the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique,
Berlioz had introduced Liszt to Part I of Goethe's Faust, sparking a potent recognition of
that "something in the air" that would eventually issue in several of
Liszt's most ambitious, enduring, and popular works. The Piano Sonata (S. 178)
is plausibly thought to embody a Faustian program, while the character
portraits of Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles make up the sprawling Eine Faust Symphonie (S. 108), and Liszt composed and orchestrated—with dazzling virtuosity—Episodes from
Lenau's Faust. (S. 110)

It was not until he heard an 1852 performance of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust that he was
inspired to begin serious work on what was to become his Faust Symphony. The
first version of the work (1854), for a small orchestra without brass, was
substantially shorter than its final form. Over the next three years, Liszt
expanded the symphony, eventually adding the final chorus in 1857.

Unlike the more episodic and narrative Dante Symphony (S. 109), the Faust Symphony is structured along
more purely musical lines. Each of its three movements is a character portrai - together, they were regarded by Liszt as
three of his finest tone poems.

The first movement, "Faust," is cast as a sonata-allegro.
Faust's theme, consisting of broken augmented triads, uses all 12 tones of the
chromatic scale, anticipating the rise of twelve-tone and other atonal
techniques that were still decades in the future. In spite of the extreme
economy of its material, the movement is nearly 30 minutes in duration,
demonstrating Liszt's process of thematic transformation as it spans a
remarkable variety of moods that evoke Faust's complex character.

"Gretchen," is slow, meditative and delicately
scored. Liszt here continues the process of thematic transformation with
material derived from the previous movement. Finally, in keeping with the
negative and mocking character “Mephistopheles” is a grotesque parody of the
first and uses only one new theme, appropriately borrowed from Liszt's own
Malédiction, S. 121.

Liszt added the choral ending to the work only after having
completed the Dante Symphony, which likewise has this feature. In the Faust
Symphony, the text is the Chorus mysticus which ends Part II of the play.

Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti (1906 –1988) conducts today’s
performance. Over the course of his career Doráti made over 600 recordings,
making him one of the most recorded conductors of the Stereo era – HMV, RCA,
Mefcury, London/Decca and Philips are some of the labels for whom he made
recordings. Who hasn’t heard his London Phase 4 recording of Tchaikovsky's
"1812" Overture (featuring the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra) with
real cannons, brass band, and church bells?

Antal Dorati’s thrillingly demonic live traversal of Liszt’s
orchestral masterpiece is often superb. Each of the three protagonists is vividly portrayed; orchestral
playing is highly charged, yet scrupulously disciplined. Like Solti, Dorati
lets the Hungarian in him take over when it comes to reading Liszt’s complex
and often emotion-packed tone poems. The first-generation digital recording is
brash and top-heavy, while still worthwhile and highly enjoyable.

For our Good Friday podcast, I chose to program a modern
piece of organ music: Olivier Messiaen’s Méditations sur le mystère de la
Sainte Trinité. The work's title is also loaded wit elements quite relevan to the composer: his spiritual nature, the chrch and organ that he was associate with for 60 years, and the number 3...

The lightly veiled reference to the Paris Church of the Trinity is important; it is there that Mesiaen explored, developed and composed the manyu intricate elements of this composition, and where he gave the first provate performance in 1971. He later gave the first public performance at the Basillica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC on March
20, 1972.

Be warned: this is not your typical piece of organ music –
it is modern, rythmically complex and at times hard to grasp… The Méditations contain virtually all
of the touchstones of Messiaen's compositional style, including the use of
modes, plainsong, birdsong, Hindu and Greek rhythms, careful coloration, and
the religious symbolism of the number three, resulting in the work's
nine-movement structure.

For Messiaen, music was a kind of language, one that could
be made equivalent to spoken language. At the time of the Méditations, Messiaen
invented a system, a "communicable language" in which notes
corresponded to individual letters of the alphabet, and specific motives were
connected to certain verbs and nouns. This language makes its appearance in
parts of the Méditations. Though not really comprehensible to the listener it
is nonetheless important to note, for it exemplifies the composer's fascination
with numbers and patterns and with the notion of communicating a universal
message.

The work is concerned thematically with the Trinity, and in
exploring this theme Messiaen juxtaposes unaltered Gregorian chant melodies and
moments of suspended time with virtuosic, jubilant, rhythmically vivacious
passages. Messiaen “meditates” on the following words:

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Anton Bruckner’s Symphony no. 5 was written at a time of much trouble and disillusionment un the composer's life - it is not outwardly a work of storm and stress, yet is one of his most contrapuntally intricate works. The symphony is sometimes referred to as "Tragic", or "Church of Faith". Three of its four movements (1, 2 and 4) begin with pizzicato strings, hence its other nickname, “the Pizzicato Symphony”. The pizzicato figures are symmetrical, in the sense that the outer movements share one figure while the middle movements share a different figure.Composed between 1875–1876, with a few minor changes over the next few years, it received its first orchestral performance in Graz on 8 April 1894 (Bruckner was sick and unable to attend: he never heard this symphony performed by an orchestra). It was dedicated to Karl von Stremayr, minister of education in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.To many people unfamiliar with the inner-structure of Bruckner’s symphonies, they all seem to feel and sound alike with an ethereal feeling to them. That’s probably because, except the Symphony No. 1, they begin with sections that are like introductions "in-tempo", easing into the main material like the opening of Beethoven's Ninth. The “tragic” symphony is the only one of Bruckner's nine that begins with a slow introduction.

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954) is a historic figure among German conductors of his time, whose legacy post-Nazi Germany is somewhat unclear, depending on which narrative you happen to subscribe.

Formed as a composer and a conductor, Furtwängler's pre-1920 positions took him to Breslau, Lübeck, Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Vienna. At the age of 35, the conductor took the baton at the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic and concurrently held the same position at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, where he remained until 1928. Furtwängler led the New York Philharmonic from 1927 to 1929, but eventually left to concentrate his career in Europe: it was during those years that Furtwängler was appointed music director of the Vienna Philharmonic, as well as holding various posts with the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals (1931-1932) and the Berlin State Opera (1933).

When the Nazis came into power in 1933, Furtwängler strongly and publicly opposed the Nazi agenda, despite pride in his German heritage, and refused to give the Nazi salute, even in Hitler's presence. In 1934, when Hindemith's Mathis de Maler was banned by the Nazi party, Furtwängler unilaterally resigned from all of his posts, aided numerous Jewish musicians under Nazi persecution, and refused to conduct in Nazi-occupied areas. Furtwängler eventually fled to Switzerland.

After the war's conclusion, the Allied command cleared Furtwängler of charges of being a Nazi sympathizer, although the American government did not "denazify" Furtwängler until 1946. In 1949, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra courted the German conductor, but its board of directors quickly withdrew its offer under the heavy and largely unjustified criticism from the orchestra's musicians.

Always welcomed in Europe, Furtwängler enjoyed continued success throughout the region and was responsible for countless recordings, most of which were made after the war. Furtwängler's idiosyncratic approach to the repertoire and spontaneous interpretations were unique to say the least. Furtwängler remained a popular artist and kept a busy schedule conducting throughout Europe until his death in Baden-Baden in 1954. According to his second wife Elisabeth Ackermann, he died a darkened and melancholy man, troubled by the atrocious history his beloved Germany had written.

This Once Upon the Internet “live” performance of Bruckner’s Tragic symphony from August 1951 at the Salzburg Festival is considered by Henry Fogel, a noted Furtwangler expert, inferior to the wartime 1942 account in terms of overall tension, calling the Salzburg performance “soft-grained”. Though analog restorations of historic performances usually fare better than this one, my feeling is that one still has to admire such an incandescent interpretation, so free, expressive, and flexible in phrasing – to borrow from a review I read, it is a “powerful, visionary reading”.

The second
in our « one work montage » series is a performance of Giuseppe
Verdi’s Requiem. A few words about the work, and the performance I
am sharing with you this week.

It is true
that Verdi is best known for his operas, but if you look at his entire
catalog of compositions, there are some non-operatic gems: the string quartet
in E Minor, several songs and choral works only to name those. Verdi’s Requiem
is the composer’s only large-scale work not written for the stage, and it
marked a transitory point in Verdi’s life—from the heyday of one wildly
successful opera after another into the relatively quiet, twilight years of his
older age.

While Verdi
officially began working on his Requiem in 1873, a small portion of it had
already been composed back in 1868. Operatic great Gioacchino Rossini had just
passed away and Verdi took it upon himself to commission a collaborative
requiem to honor the composer’s memory. He began the process by providing a
Libera me (Deliver me) to the effort. A year later, the Messa per Rossini was
complete, with thirteen composers having contributed their work, squabbling and
backstabbing all the while. Despite the fact that the composers’ lack of
camaraderie meant the piece was ultimately poorly put together, the premier
performance was slated for the one year anniversary of Rossini’s death. For one
reason or another, for better or for worse, the premiere was canceled and the
piece was all but forgotten. More than one hundred years later, in 1988, the
Messa per Rossini finally got its moment in the spotlight. Of the thirteen
contributing composers, the only familiar name on the program was Verdi’s.

Disappointed
with the fate of the mass for Rossini, Verdi kept returning to his Libera me,
convinced that it could be put to good use somehow. It took the death of
another Italian artistic fixture in 1873 - noted poet, nationalist novelist,
and personal hero of Verdi’s, Alessandro Manzoni for him to cast the Libera
Me into a new work, which we now know as his Missa da Requiem.

Working
diligently, by May of 1874—the first anniversary of Manzoni’s death—the Verdi
Requiem was complete and ready to premiere. The piece was debuted most
reverently on May 22, 1874 in the cathedral of Saint Mark in Milan, and later
at La Scala. . The Verdi Requiem met with continued success on a long, European
tour, with one of the pinnacle performances taking place in Albert Hall,
exactly one year after the premier of the piece. For this concert, Verdi
himself led a chorus of over a thousand and a one hundred forty piece
orchestra.

There are
few notable differences between the layout of Verdi’s Requiem and that of the
typical requiem mass. It consists of the Introit & Kyrie, the ten-part Dies
irae (“Day of Wrath”) sequence, the Offeratory, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, the
Communion and, of course, the Libera me sequence. Verdi did leave out the
oft-used Gloria.

The music
of the Requiem is characterized by wild undulations. The composer moves from
sparse, otherworldly vocals to brass-heavy inescapable brimstone and fire, and
back again. Throughout, he uses the terrifying theme of the Dies irae to remind
the listener of their inevitable mortality and judgment, all the while relying
on wavering chromaticism to leave a sense of the composer’s own unresolved
spiritual questions.

While the Verdi Requiem has its unmistakably operatic
moments, it is a work of far-reaching spiritual and emotional magnitude that at
once pushed the religious music envelope and gave new meaning to the phrase “to
each his own,” as evidenced by its cross-denominational/cross-cultural
longevity and popularity.

Some of our
greatest singers and conductors have recorded Verdi's Requiem, and Claudio
Abbado has done so at least three times, leading different orchestras and vocal
forces. This performance was recorded during public performances in Berlin
commemorating the centenary of Verdi's death (25 & 27 January 2001). Ailing
even them from the cancer that ultimately claimed him a few weeks ago, Abbado
shows just how much this work meant to him in the circumstances. He captures
the score's devotional spirit as well as its dramatic power -- and, of course,
the Berlin Philharmonic's burnished sound seems tailor-made for this piece.

The soloist
quartet of Daniela Barcellona, Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna and Julian
Konstantinov joins Abbado, his orchestra and the combined forces of the
Swedish Radio Chorus and Eric Ericson Chamber Choir. Not surprisingly, this
performance received a Grammy nomination for the 2002 Best Choral Performance.

In a rare
convergence of events, this montage is also the beginning of a four-part
thematic arc simply called “One-Work Montages”. As the title suggests, all the
montages in this series feature a single work. This isn’t something unusual in
these pages – our Podcast Vault selection for April – the Berlioz Requiem – is
one such example, and so was our Christmas montage of the Nutcracker.

When we hit
a major milestone, I usually don’t feel limited to my usual 90 minute ceiling
for montages – so I thought I’d go all-out today, and pick what I think is the
longest work in my collection – Leonard Bernstein leading a performance of Mahler's
Symphony No. 3.

For the
longest time, this Symphony held the distinction of being in the Guinness
Book of World Records. The reason? Of all the symphonies in the active
classical music repertoire, this is by far the longest, with an average performance
time that routinely crosses the 100-minute barrier. Other works, including
Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder", exceed this; but in the symphonic realm,
this record stood until the mid-70’s when it was overtaken by Havergal Brian’s
Gothic Symphony.

Every conceivable
single kind of human, natural, physical, and spiritual emotion that has ever
existed can be found in this gargantuan six-movement work, which incorporates
material not only from Mahler's "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" song cycle,
but also the Night Wanderer's Song of Nietzsche's "Also Sprach
Zarathustra". The first movement alone, with a normal duration of a little
more than thirty minutes, sometimes forty, forms Part One of the symphony. Part
Two consists of the other five movements and has a duration of about sixty to
seventy minutes.

As with
each of his “Wunderhorn” symphonies, Mahler provided a programme to explain the
narrative of the piece. In its simplest form, the program consists of a title
for each of the six movements:

1."Pan
Awakes, Summer Marches In"

2."What
the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me"

3."What
the Animals in the Forest Tell Me"

4."What
Man Tells Me"

5."What
the Angels Tell Me"

6."What
Love Tells Me"

Today’s
recording of the Mahler Third – like many of Leonard Bernstein’s recording
projects for Deutsche Grammophon - was made before a live audience at
Lincoln Center in August 1986. Because of Bernstein's typically immense
conducting and (arguably) ultra-slow tempos, it is also perhaps the single
longest recording of this symphony, clocking in at close to 106 minutes, from
the portentous horn-dominated opening bars to the tension-releasing conclusion
in D Major.

Bernstein
marshals seemingly everything he knows about conducting into this performance.
He is ably assisted by the legendary German mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, the
New York Choral Artists, and the Brooklyn Boys Choir in this endeavor, along
with contributions from posthorn soloist Philip Smith, trombonist Joseph
Alessi, and violinist and concertmaster Glenn Dichterow.